Mr. Cereal and I are not rich by any means, so we have to really think through our grocery shopping strategy. This is a challenge for a number of reasons, but our primary reasons are money restraints and love of food. We are adventurous eaters and LeLe is shaping up to be the same, so our grocery bill can sometimes get outrageous if we aren’t careful. We have a strategy in place now that works most months and allows for some splurges. I would guesstimate that we spend between $300 to $350 on groceries per month. We try to be as economical as possible without feeling bored by what we eat.
I love to cook. It’s really one of my passions and that makes it one of my priorities. This actually ends up helping us most months because it means we rarely eat out. I try to plan a week of meals out and we go shopping on Saturdays or Sundays. We tried doing a month’s worth of shopping, but we always ended up throwing away expired food and I would often forget what we had planned. So for now, we do once a week shopping. I have a running list of main and side dishes we like a lot, so I can just pick from that list and create our weekly menus.
D I S C O U N T E D F O O D
Our local grocery store has a number of discount sections that include nearly expired food. This means that we can pick up good cuts of meat and dairy products for about half the regular price. This is awesome because we often find really nice meat for really cheap and because we are usually planning to eat whatever we buy fairly soon, it doesn’t matter that it is about to expire. The other awesome thing about this store is that they have a rewards program. I can load coupons onto my card online and the discounts come off automatically when I check out. I also earn points which turn into discounts at the gas station.
G R O C E R Y O U T L E T S T O R E
We also shop at a grocery outlet store. This is hit and miss as far as available products, so I usually have to be flexible in our meal plan. We tend to get boxed items like cereal and breakfast foods here as well as cleaning supplies, lunch box items, and occasionally we find dairy items that work with our meal plan. We can usually get two bags of groceries here for around $30.00.
C O S T C O
We shop bulk when possible. We have a Costco membership and we go about 4 times a year to stock up on toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex, and multi vitamins. This really helps our monthly budget because we are not always having to buy these kinds of items.
F A R M E R ‘ S M A R K E T
The other thing that really helps us stay within our budget is shopping at our local farmer’s market. We are lucky to have such a great market and it is open twice a week so I can grab fresh produce for way less than it is priced at a grocery store. I buy local honey, pork, vegetables, and fruit from the same vendors every week and it saves us a ton of money. An added bonus is that it tastes really good too. And I feel good about buying locally.
C H E A P & Q U I C K F O O D S
I try to keep some items on hand that are cheap and quick to make for the nights I don’t feel like doing a lot of cooking. This is stuff like polenta or boxed Mac and cheese. This helps us avoid ordering food because I have a hard time justifying a meal out if we have easy food at home.
S P L U R G E S
We do tend to splurge on two items — milk and our Sunday breakfasts. I buy a brand of milk from a local dairy. It is definitely more expensive, but it also tastes amazing and I feel good about feeding it to LeLe. Breakfast is our weekly treat and it is our fun family outing on Sunday mornings.
. . . . .
It’s hard balancing nutrition and money, but we are lucky to live in a town with a lot of grocery stores and a lot of options for us.
What are some ways you save on your grocery bills?
pomelo / 5866 posts
I shop the sales. Meaning if it is on sale and we eat it, I buy it and work it into the menu for the week. Do you count/divide your costco bill into your $350 a month? If I didn’t include my usual bulk Costco purchases I could definitely lower my bill! I haven’t tried grocery outlets. I don’t even know if we have any.
pea / 12 posts
Planning menus and shopping less often, plus doing almost all of our shopping at ALDI are the secrets to our grocery budget. There are 8 people in my family, eating most meals at home, and we still keep our grocery bill at just a little over $100 a week.
guest
We stretch more expensive items – like meat – within cheaper items – like beans. So for example, if I’m making tacos then I will do half ground beef and half beans (or sometimes all beans!) And we eat meat sparingly so that I can buy higher quality, more expensive stuff. We also buy a lot of frozen produce so that there’s less chance for food waste. We also use reusable cloth instead of paper products and buy no drinks other than for treats (orange juice for a Sunday breakfast or root beer for a treat here or there) so we mainly just drink water. Oh and we shop at SuperTarget (my husband works for Target Corp so we get a discount) and their Cartwheel app is awesome for discounts, especially if combined with mobile coupons.
blogger / apricot / 378 posts
I love these tips. This is one area I’m working so hard on right now – our grocery budget is the one area we go over on almost every month! I haven’t found the area for the discounted food at our store yet, I need to look for that next time I’m there! You’ve got me inspired to try some new things for keeping our budget down, thanks for sharing!
blogger / kiwi / 626 posts
@808love: I do count my Costco purchases into the total. We spend around 60-70 per week on groceries, plus one trip to the bulk grocery store at the beginning of the month for things like flour or spices. That is usually around 60-70 too, so I generally stay under 350.
blogger / kiwi / 626 posts
@wildolive: You are amazing! 8 people at 100 per week is pure talent. Great job!
grapefruit / 4731 posts
I keep a price book… writing down everything we normally eat with the price and unit price along with we where we buy it. It tells me where I can normally get the item for the cheapest.
What is very annoying is when things jump up for no reason. For the longest time I could find a lot of staples for cheap at Target but about 7 months ago all the prices shot up, just there. I’m not sure why but the price book told me so and now the cheapest for our staples are somewhere else.
I have been keeping the price book for so long I see trends of staple items going up and can adjust our food cost do to inflation. It’s been pretty useful.